176
THE NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE.

The four continental Colonies of South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland,
occupy a seaboard of not less than three thousand miles, with points of settlement and traffic through-
out its extent; and the islands of New Zealand are a thousand miles distant from the Australian
coast. The letters brought by the way of Cape Leeuin by a mail steamer calling at any port in the
Colony of South Australia, could not be forwarded from that point by any practicable means of
communication to Your Majesty's subjects at the northern ports of Queensland under twelve or
fourteen days, or to the ports of New Zealand under nine. A steamer arriving by the Torres Straits
route would afford still less satisfaction, as the most populous Colonies would be the last to receive
their letters. The means of communication with many important settlements in the interior of
Australia is only by a journey of several days, and cannot, on account of cost, be more frequent than
once or twice a week. It will thus be seen that any single monthly line of steamers would leave large
numbers of Your Majesty's subjects unable to reply to their correspondence by the return mails, and
that any two or more lines by the same route would fail in affording general satisfaction.

The Representatives of the several Colonies assembled in Conference, after careful and anxious
consideration of the whole subject, on behalf of their respective Governments, approach Your Majesty,
and humbly and dutifully represent that, in order to meet the demands of the large and growing
commerce of these Colcnies, and to serve in a satisfactory manner the complicated interests that
connect them with the United Kingdom, it has now become necessary to maintain three Ocean Postal
Services; one by way of King George's Sound, one by way of Torres Straits, and one by way of New
Zealand and Panama. The last two of these routes have been opened successfully by the enterprise of
Your Majesty's subjects in Australia and New Zealand; and their advantages to the Colonies most
nearly affected by them are too apparent to be relinquished.

The associated Colonies, by their Representatives in Conference, have agreed to contribute annually
a moiety not exceeding £200,000 of the entire cost of maintaining these three lines of postal communi-
cation, and they are prepared to act in combination in contracting for the necessary services to open
and maintain these routes in connection with Your Majesty's contract services to India and China and
to the West Indies. They humbly pray that Your Majesty may be advised to take such steps as may
be expedient, by terminating or re-adjusting present contracts, or calling for fresh tenders for the
performance of the main services, to establish the proposed United Australasian Postal System
without drawing upon the limited resources of the Colonies beyond the large sum which they cheerfully
undertake to pay.

Your Memorialists humbly urge the claims of the great Colonies they represent to the favorable
consideration of Your Most Gracious Majesty, and they trust that a project so closely in harmony with
the spirit of British enterprise, so essential for the development of British trade, so calculated in its
effects to promote the welfare of Your Majesty's loyal subjects in Australasia, and one in which the
whole of the Colonies are acting in union, may receive Your Majesty's royal favor and support.

And Your Majesty's loyal and dutiful subjects will ever pray.

(Signed) JAMES MCCULLOCH, Chief Secretary, and Member of the
Executive Council of Victoria.

(Signed) GEO. VERDON, Treasurer, and Member of the Executive
Council, Victoria.

(Signed) HENRY PARKES, Colonial Secretary, and Member of the
Executive Council, New South Wales.

(Signed) JOSEPH DOCKER, Postmaster-General, and Member of the
Executive Council, New South Wales.

(Signed) JOHN HALL, Postmaster-General, and Member of the Execu-
tive Council, New Zealand.

(Signed) CROSBIE WARD, Special Representative of New Zealand.

(Signed) JAS. P. BOUCAUT, Attorney-General, and Member of the
Executive Council, South Australia.

(Signed) WALTER DUFFIELD, Colonial Treasurer, and Member of the
Executive Council, South Australia.

(Signed) A. MACALISTER, Vice-President of the Executive Council,
and Colonial Secretary of Queensland.

(Signed) ST. GEORGE R. GORE, Postmaster-General, and Member of
the Executive Council, Queensland.

(Signed) THOS. D. CHAPMAN, Colonial Treasurer, and Member of the
Executive Council of Tasmania.

Melbourne, 20th March, A.D. 1867.

Enclosure No. 3.

PAPERS SUBMITTED BY THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE SIX COLONIES OF
VICTORIA, NEW SOUTH WALES, NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH AUSTRALIA, QUEENS-
LAND, AND TASMANIA.

NEW ZEALAND.

THE scheme of Postal Communication between the Australasian Colonies and Great Britain, which
appears to the Delegates from New Zealand to present the greatest advantages and to be most likely
to prove satisfactory both to the Mother Country and to the Colonies, is one under which the two
services by way of Panama and Suez, should be regarded as constituting one aggregate line of Postal
Communication, so timed as to alternate as far as possible fortnightly with each other; the total cost